Our Work

SITUATION Ohio State House Minority Leader Emilia Sykes faced an uphill challenge in Ohio’s redrawn 13th Congressional District. In a majority white district, Sykes was running to become the first Black woman to represent the 13th in a midterm environment that many thought would favor Republicans and most race rating organizations like FiveThirtyEight and Cook …

Continue reading “Bringing it Home in Ohio’s 13th Congressional District”

SITUATION Like every other Democratic candidate running in a swing state, Senator Mark Kelly faced formidable challenges in 2022. The President drew sharp criticism, inflation raged, crime rates jumped, and Arizona took center stage in the immigration crisis. Early polling suggested a tight election. Most observers recognize Mark Kelly’s politically-compelling background—husband of former Congresswoman Gabby …

Continue reading “Candidate-and Campaign-Quality Matters: Case Study in Arizona”

SITUATION Congresswoman Susan Wild was facing a much tougher race for reelection in Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District than she had experienced before. Redistricting moved her district from one Biden won by nearly 5 to one Biden won by 0.6 percent. With a midterm environment where the incumbent president’s party typically fares poorly, and an opponent …

Continue reading ““Dead on Arrival”: Helping Susan Wild Defy the Odds in a Bad Year”

SITUATION In New Hampshire, Senator Maggie Hassan sought re–election to a second term in the U.S. Senateagainst challenger Don Bolduc. In 2016, Hassan had won by just 1,017 votes, representing the tightestmargin of any Senate race that cycle. SOLUTION Guided by GQR’s research the Hassan campaign made the decision to fortify Senator Hassan’s brand in …

Continue reading “Re-electing Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire”

SITUATION In PA-08, a district that voted for Trump twice, Congressman Matt Cartwright faced a challenging race for reelection. In a tough midterm environment for Democrats, Cartwright needed to demonstrate broad appeal to win over both Trump and Biden voters against two-time challenger Jim Bognet. First elected to Congress in 2012, Cartwright’s ability to repeatedly …

Continue reading “Congressman Matt Cartwright: Appealing to Voters Across the Aisle”

SITUATION Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro began his campaign to defeat extremist State RepresentativeDoug Mastriano in his run for Governor with a challenging fight ahead. Born and bred from the Right’spowerful online ecosystem, Mastriano had established himself as a figurehead of the right–wingmovement in Pennsylvania, with a well–known social media presence, key Trump allies with …

Continue reading “Defeating a January 6 Insurrectionist and His Disinformation Machine”

A new survey of New Hampshire likely voters reveals bipartisan support for a policy that guarantees access to paid leave, including family, parental and medical leave, for all U.S. workers. With midterm elections approaching, voters also say they would be more likely to support candidates who advocate for a federal paid leave policy. By a …

Continue reading “Strong Support in New Hampshire For Guaranteed Access to Paid Leave For All U.S. Workers”

As the coronavirus pandemic galvanizes global attention and dominates concern of publics world-wide, GQR is analyzing available data on global opinion on COVID-19.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee played a larger, more effective role in 2018 cycle than in almost any previous cycle in our Party’s history. 

GQR, with its long history of supporting press freedoms and organizations in the US and globally, partnered with a Republican firm to conduct focus groups and a poll around these issues.

Governor Tom Wolf won reelection with a commanding 58 percent of the vote share in a seemingly easy skate to reelection. However, the scale of Wolf’s victory belies how far the Wolf campaign had come and represents the culmination of a political strategy that began two years before this race was truly engaged.

The special election for Senate in Minnesota in 2018 offered a unique set of circumstances. Guided by GQR’s early research, Smith and her team put together a three-stage strategy to not only win in 2018, but prepare for a 2020 re-election campaign.

In the final weeks ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, as Republican seats looked increasingly imperiled, many campaigns and activists reported a flood of online attacks on progressive candidates – often misleading, savage, and incendiary. GQR rapidly processed over 500,000 social media posts relevant to races and voters in Georgia, Florida, Michigan, and Wisconsin. With access to a social media data through a dashboard firehose and historical knowledge to expedite manual listening and pattern recognition among publicly available social media data on platforms with more restricted access like Facebook and Instagram, GQR conducted network and threat analysis to identify coordinated digital activity.

The 2016 elections thrust Russian electoral interference into the spotlight in the US. In GQR’s work for pro-Western leaders across Central Europe, GQR has relied on key strategies for battling the Kremlin playbook of deception, distraction, and subversion.

The world is witnessing the greatest challenge to democracy since the Cold War, and this phenomenon has not spared the United States. To help provide answers, a bi-partisan consortium including Freedom House, the George W. Bush Institute, and the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement commissioned GQR and a Republican polling firm to conduct research of Americans’ attitudes on our democracy and on support for democracy in American foreign policy. 

The liberation of Iraq from ISIS in 2017 may have introduced a fragile sense of security, but it also created major questions about what led to the success of ISIS in the first place and what needs to be done to make sure extremist groups do not return. GQR carried out a series of focus groups and nationwide surveys that produced deep insights into what views Iraqis from different communities share, and how best to bridge divides on key issues where they do not.